Ferry Massage With Her Stepsister

The ferry horn blared once as it pulled away from the dock, a low mournful note swallowed by the fog. Ingrid dumped her duffel on the lower bunk and stared at the cabin. It was barely wide enough for the two narrow beds stacked against the bulkhead, a fold-down sink, and a sliver of floor. The porthole showed nothing but black water and the occasional smear of distant lights. Paulina locked the door behind them and kicked off her boots, already peeling out of her hoodie.

“Parents cancel last minute and dump us in this floating closet,” Paulina muttered, voice low and amused. “Classic.”

Ingrid, twenty-two and still flushed from hauling bags up three decks, tried not to watch the way her stepsister’s tank top clung when she stretched. They’d grown up in the same house since Ingrid was twelve and Paulina fourteen—same dinners, same fights over the bathroom, same Christmas mornings—but never the same blood. That distinction had started mattering more every year, every summer when Paulina came home from college in short shorts, every holiday when Ingrid caught herself staring at the curve of Paulina’s mouth or the freckles on her shoulders.

The boat rocked gently, engines humming through the steel. Ingrid sat on the edge of the lower bunk and pulled off her sneakers. “At least we got a private cabin. Shared bathrooms with strangers would’ve been worse.”

Paulina snorted and climbed up to the top bunk just long enough to shove her bag into the netting, then dropped back down. The space forced them close; her knee brushed Ingrid’s thigh. “You’re tense as hell. I can see it in your neck.” She reached out without asking and pressed two fingers into the tight muscle at the base of Ingrid’s skull. “Jesus. Lie down. Let me work on that.”